Resource Centre

Preparing for Adult Life: Research & Evaluation

Over the past few years, much attention has been directed towards ‘transition’. Many studies have asked families, youth, and health professionals about their experiences. Focus groups, surveys, questionnaires were conducted to gather information.  The same themes were heard over and over about how the process could be improved.

From this early research, much has been learned about ‘best practices’ for transition. Many new programs are being put into practice based on these recommendations. Attention is now turning to the programs themselves and their impact. Are newly transitioned young adults engaged in their health care? Are they staying healthy? Are they participating in life? Were they well prepared and satisfied with their experience? These are just some of the questions that can be asked. Some can be answered right away. Others will take several years to answer. We need to continue to look at how the experience is changing.

We now have an adult partner for 2 of our client groups: young adults with cerebral palsy and those with an acquired brain injury. Based on current ‘best practices’, we are remodeling two of our transfer clinics. We are using a Program Logic Model to develop the clinics and identify goals. This model promotes thinking about program evaluation from the onset. We are currently identifying the outcomes and program benchmarks that we are interested in. We will be presenting this framework at our upcoming Bloorview Transitions 2008 Pre-Conference in May. Stay tuned for more information as our evaluation progresses.

In the future, we plan to evaluate the effectiveness of our Life Skill and Therapeutic Recreation programs, the impact of the Family & Youth Facilitator roles, and the new Growing Up Ready tools, resources, and education workshops. Some of this work has already started. Other will begin as our research capacity grows.

For more info about our Growing Up Ready evaluation and research initiatives, please contact:

Shauna Kingsnorth, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Bloorview Research Institute and Life Skills & Wellness Institute

E-mail: skingnorth at bloorview dot ca *(see Note below)

Note: Copy the above e-mail address into the To field of your e-mail message and reconstruct the e-mail address by removing the spaces and replacing the “at” and “dot” with the proper symbols (@ and .) respectively.

Back to For Professionals

• 
• 
• 

Select Text Size

• Adjust text size: Small Aa
• Adjust text size: Medium Aa
• Adjust text size: Large Aa